‘Who did?’
He sighed. ‘I don’t know. People on the Internet. I don’t know who they are. There are various threads…’
‘And how much are you taking from these people, these poor South Africans?’
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown. ‘A few hundred dollars…’
‘A few hundred dollars?’ she screeched.
In fact it had sold for more than two thousand. He said, ‘What? I haven’t lied to them. What are you so upset about?’
‘What am I so upset about? It’s immoral.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re taking advantage of these people.’
‘No I’m not…’
‘You are!’
‘I’m not. If they want to buy it—’
‘It’s a worthless… It’s worthless!’
‘They don’t think it is.’
‘You do. You wouldn’t pay for it.’
‘So what? I don’t think it’s holy. If I thought it was holy, I might.’
‘Can’t you see,’ she said, ‘that what you’re doing is wrong?’
With his hands in his pockets, James said, ‘No. I didn’t say it was holy. I never said it was holy. I was totally upfront with these people. What they do with their money is up to them.’
She stared at him with her mouth open.
‘They want it,’ he said. ‘There were hundreds of them.’ That was true. ‘The money’s just a way of deciding who wants it most. Isn’t it quite patronising of you,’ he said, suddenly thinking of something else, ‘to think you know better than they do how they should spend their money? They don’t need you to tell them how to spend their money. Who are you to tell them what to do? They’re free to do what they want with their money.’
‘That’s just a way of excusing your cynicism,’ she said. ‘You know what you’re doing is wrong.’
For a moment the only sound was what was now a downpour drumming on the skylight. She stood up and slipped her feet into her shoes.
‘You’re going?’ He sounded surprised.
‘M-hm.’
‘Why don’t you stay here? You look exhausted. You’re not upset, are you? This hasn’t upset you?’
‘No,’ she said. She was putting on her white puffa jacket. ‘I do think it’s dishonest.’
‘Why?’ he said exasperatedly. ‘It’s not dishonest. Why is it dishonest?’
She thought about this for a while. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘it’s not dishonest. It’s not very nice, though. If they want it so much, and you think it’s worthless, you should just let them have it.’
‘Why don’t you stay?’
She sighed. Then her shoulders slumped and she fell against him. He put his arms around her. ‘Stay,’ he said. ‘You can sleep in my bed. I won’t make any noise. I have to go out and do some things anyway. Okay? Okay?’ She nodded—he felt her head move on his shoulder.
When he had put her to bed, wearing a set of pyjamas that he never wore himself, he took the umbrella and walked Hugo. The lights were on in offices and students hurried through the streets of Bloomsbury in hoods. He had some toast and coffee, and then a shower. All of which took place to the varying sounds of the rain—on the skylight, on the umbrella, pinging on the area steps, splashing in the mineral puddles of the melting area floor.
*
He was lying on the sofa with the TV on—the volume so low that at first the sound seemed to be off—waiting for the two-ten at Sandown, when she appeared in the doorway, wearing his tartan pyjamas and looking extremely muzzy. ‘What time is it?’ she said.
‘Two.’
She moaned and smothered her face with her hands—she had only slept for five hours. Moving slowly, she picked her way through the stuff on the floor and lay down on the sofa with him. Lying there warmly squashed together, he put his hand inside the pyjama jacket and stroked her soft stomach. (Up—very much so.) There was a loud sluicing sound from somewhere in the same vicinity. ‘Are you hungry?’ he said. ‘Do you want something to eat?’ She laughed and said she wanted to have a shower first and stood up shakily, tipping over with a squeal when she was halfway up and poking him with a sharp elbow.
When he heard the shower start—not a very vigorous sound—he stood up himself and took her a towel. She was standing in the stall, the plastic of which—limescaled and wet—was only partially transparent, with her wet hair trailing over her face and stuck to her white shoulders, and water trickling down her long pale body. It was not very warm in there. The only heating was a single electric bar over the door, pathetically amplified by a piece of scorched tinfoil. He tended to turn it on an hour in advance, and feel its just perceptible warmth on his shoulders, like the weakest sort of sunlight, when he stepped out of the stall. Though it was too late now, he pulled the string that turned it on, noticeably soiled where his and other fingers had seized it innumerable times, and said, ‘Here’s a towel.’ She started slightly. With her eyes shut she had not seen or heard that he was there. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
He watched the two-forty from Sandown, the novices’ chase, while she sat naked on his bed drying her hair. When it was over, the winning trainer, Venetia Williams, talked to an interviewer about some Festival hopes of hers. ‘One hopes,’ she said, with a wistful smile, over the whine of the hairdryer. ‘One hopes. Of course, if it doesn’t happen one mustn’t be disappointed. But one hopes.’
When she was dried and dressed, they went out and, holding each other tightly, traversed the windy tray of Brunswick Square. They had a late lunch at an Italian place on Lamb’s Conduit Street. When they left the restaurant it was twilight. On the way home they passed the Renoir and had a look at what was on. All of which made him think, as they stood there looking at the programme, of another day when they had done exactly the same things. That Tuesday in the first week of February, when London was under a hard, dark frost. That February afternoon he had fed her forkfuls of strawberry tart while she looked through his limited selection of DVDs, finally and sentimentally settling on Brief Encounter—which he had never seen; it had been free with a Sunday newspaper. They had not been watching the film long, however, when he noticed that she had surreptitiously undone her jeans and had her hand inside them, and though she went very pink and smiled distractedly, she did not stop what she was doing. He said, ‘I doubt this film has ever had that effect on anyone until now.’ Which elicited a small hiccup of a laugh. Then he pulled the jeans first halfway down her thighs, then over her knees and finally free of her feet. The film plodded stoically on, oblivious to what was happening on the sofa. ‘There’s your train,’ said Celia Johnson. ‘Yes, I know,’ said Trevor Howard.
‘Squeeze my nipples,’ said Katherine. ‘It will make me have an orgasm. Use your teeth…’ she whispered urgently. ‘Your…’ It overtook her in mid-phrase, a sudden open-mouthed expulsion of air from her lungs as she struggled to seize him with all four of her limbs, her shouts quickly subsiding into a series of soblike sounds, quiet sobs. She shuddered as some sort of aftershock seemed to tickle through her, and went limp in his embrace. They lay there for a minute until she sighed and with an exaggerated mwah! kissed him on the mouth. Putting her hand on it, she said she had to decide what word she was going to use for his… Well that was the point. She needed a word for it. All the existing words, she thought, sounded vulgar, were swearwords, or silly, or had a frigid medical neutrality. With such an imperfect vocabulary it was not an easy thing to speak of. She would have to find her own word, she said, with her hand on it. A private word. Of necessity, a private word.